Walked to the C-store for lottery tickets

I walked about 1.1 miles round trip to purchase hope for a more comfortable future for us and the grandkid. And before anyone says anything about odds and statistics might I remind you your author survived getting hit not once, not twice, but three times getting hit by motor vehicles with enough velocity to cause the vehicles to get scrapped, and the last time I was hit the truck was going between 45 and 65 MPH with a “best confidence” speed of 60, based on my trajectory.

Anyway, the jackpot for the Texas Lotto is $9 million, which works out to just over $200K/year after taxes, which is quite enough to finish the hot rod and fix everything in the house in 2 years, and then just veg for the next 28 years to leave as much as possible for the grandkid.

The jackpot for the Powerball is enough to fix everything and make 3 or 4 cars in the first year and then spend the next 20 or so years bumming around the world, and still leave the grandkid with more than enough to live on forever.

Either one will be enough to get my teeth fixed, and by “fixed” I mean bite and chew like when I was a kid, but take them out at night for a good soak to get them cleaner than I ever could in my mouth. Seriously, I never did get the hang of brushing my teeth without some kind of a guide to show me where I missed. Soaking in some kind of cleaning solution is a much better alternative for me. And then swishing mouth wash to clean my gums, because I’m too ticklish to brush my gums.

I have a bunch of stuff that needs fixing medically, but that’s more of a long-term project, because I don’t heal like I used to. And I have been delaying maintenance for so long most of this shit is going to require surgery and years of PT to fix. If I had been able to get medical care without having to come up with mountains of cash most of this stuff could have been fixed with therapy instead of surgery. But that was then and this is now, maybe.

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Why are both ends of the economic spectrum unclean?

You know what I mean. If you have more money than you can spend you’re filthy rich, but if you have more needs than resources, you’re dirt poor. This is a roundabout way of telling everybody that we didn’t win the Lotto Texas yesterday, so we are still on the “dirt poor” end of the spectrum. Well, not actually “dirt” poor, but not entirely clean either. But this still doesn’t answer my question of why the extreme ends of the economic spectrum are not clean. I’m pretty sure filthy rich comes from the same place as calling money “filthy lucre”, alleging that money itself is dirty and having too much makes you dirty, too. But how can the absence of something dirty make you dirty? It is a conundrum.

And on the thing that otherwise occupies my mind, the Subaru EJ20X and 5 speed transmission combination has sold out leaving only the engines remaining, still at the same $1K price. And those engines are still about the best bang for the buck for the Sprint-T, even if I have to make a new bellhousing to mount a transmission. And since I just had to drain $3325 from the bank account for a trip to the ER that didn’t tell me what made my leg suddenly balloon up to about the size of a slow-pitch softball, I really don’t have funds for the engine.

Anyway, that swollen mess is the latest reason I don’t have money for building the Sprint-T.🤑 And another reason why I’m buying another ticket for the $14.5 million Lotto Texas drawing on Saturday, but not for the $750 million Powerball drawing the same night. I’m trying to not be greedy, I can live very comfortably on the payout from the Lotto Texas drawing, but the Powerball payout is really too much. And also not enough to help other poor people, although I suppose I could fund a couple of Planned Parenthood offices with the leftovers from $8,470,223 after taxes in the first year. And it just gets worse every year after that. Too much for one family to reasonably spend, but still not enough to make a serious dent in poverty. And FYI the after tax and Mrs. the Poet take home is $123,730 from the Lotto Texas annuity, so buy the Canadian bungalow, start construction on the rebuilt Texas winter home, and also start buying parts for the Sprint-T. So realistically “leftovers” from the first year Powerball will be about $8,000,000. Which would mean the entire next year tax savings would be enough to live on, freeing up the payout for “do-goodism”. I mean seriously, the tax deductions alone from $8,000,000 worth of charity are more than the entire Lotto Texas payout after taxes, meaning we could live stupid rich for the rest of our lives and never spend anything out of the actual after-tax payout before deductions with the payout from Saturday’s Powerball.

And I have been working in severe adverse conditions today.

That’s Clyde riding my neck about productivity, while keeping me from concentrating on my writing. 🙂

After melting running errands yesterday, blessed coolness today

Yesterday I was depositing checks and picking up my pulls from the comic shop and basically melting in the sun as the temperature again approached the triple digits. I also got my toes done as I was snagging the sheets again when I didn’t wear socks to bed, then walked the 0.9 mile from the nail salon to Casa de El Poeta for a full limit on my Sweatcoin collecting. Speaking of Sweatcoin, I still don’t have enough to cash out any, but I’m getting there, almost $15 right now. I need to get a bunch more to have enough to cash out at $50.

One thing that is hard for me to get used to is the thought of actually having money to spend on days I’m not doing the lab rat thing. My mentality has been when I’m out and not visiting the LRK I don’t have any money unless this is a trip to actually spend money on something specific. And that I wouldn’t have a couple of bucks to spend on a cold drink and a snack if the urge took me. So I stopped at Jack in the Box and got a Cherry Coke Zero Sugar™ and a slice of half-price cheesecake one because I needed it and the other because I could. Well I didn’t need the Cherry Coke Zero Sugar™ specifically, just something cold and wet, but the cheesecake was definitely because I could.

Now today it was much cooler as the first of two cold fronts passed through leaving temperatures in the mid-80s most of the day. It’s only 91° as I get ready to get the lottery with the $15.25 million jackpot. Back from the store. And just for giggles I also bought a ticket for the Powerball $223 million jackpot, which the first year payout will have more than enough money for us to live on the rest of our lives. I suppose we could move to a small town without internet and set them up with Gigabit internet just because we want it and letting everyone else have access just makes sense. Seriously, I have so little experience spending money in large sums that after setting up a retirement account to take care of my financial needs for the rest of my life I have no idea what to do with the rest of the first year payment.

Well if tomorrow’s post doesn’t make much sense, I’m still drunk from celebrating winning.

Playing the lottery helps my depression

Buying a lottery ticket buys something I can’t get anyplace else, it buys me hope. When I have that ticket there is the chance, infinitesimal though it may be, that I will get enough money to live comfortably and pass down to my kids some of that comfort. No ticket means zero chance, a ticket means a small but non-zero chance of winning, and that makes all the difference in my outlook on life. I mean look at my life, it’s all a series of wild coincidences one after another and several non-survivable scenarios that were million to one odds or worse. If anyone should win the lottery it should be me. Plus I usually play the Texas Lottery which has far better odds of winning than any of the national games. Still astronomical, but in a lower orbit than the national games.

Mrs. the Poet has already agreed to split the payouts in thirds, one third each and the other third for the household expenses. If anything needs to be spent on the house for personal use, like wiring the garage for 220V for power tools, that comes out of personal budgets. What would this do for the TGS2? Well I think instead of the minivan I would use the flood-damaged Corvette from Houston scenario as the donor vehicle because I still wouldn’t have an unlimited budget. Close enough to unlimited for a bucket, though.

And my hand is still messed up and making typing hard, so this is the end of this post